Opinion: Flexible work means little if leadership roles remain built around outdated workplace norms. Karlie Cremin argues Australia is still failing to support mothers at the top.
For all the progress Australia claims to have made on flexible work, one stubborn truth remains: the higher you climb in leadership, the less flexibility you are afforded. And for women returning from parental leave, that contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
In theory, senior leaders can return part-time. In practice, many are still expected to carry a full-time workload compressed into fewer paid hours. Meetings remain scheduled around traditional executive norms, while decision-making structures assume constant availability. In many cases, visibility is rewarded over effectiveness. The result is that many women are forced to choose between being perceived as committed leaders or present parents.
We continue to talk about flexibility as though it is universally available, when, in reality, leadership roles are often built on assumptions that belong to another era.
That tension becomes especially acute after the birth of a first child. Leadership already demands high levels of cognitive and emotional labour. Parenthood fundamentally shifts how time, energy and priorities are organised.
Suddenly, life is no longer self-directed, but is driven by the needs of another human being. Yet many organisations still expect returning mothers to perform as though nothing significant has changed.
And when women do return, many encounter a more insidious but equally damaging challenge: a loss of credibility.
The leadership penalty mothers still face
Australia’s own data paints a confronting picture. A 2024 national review by the University of South Australia found that workplace discrimination, disadvantage and bias remain pervasive experiences for pregnant and parent workers. The study reported that, among the respondents to the review, 89 per cent experienced discrimination during pregnancy, 84.7 per cent during parental leave, and 92.8 per cent when returning to work.
What these figures reveal is not simply discrimination in policy, but discrimination in perception.
In male-dominated industries especially, women returning from parental leave are often viewed differently. Ambition is questioned, while commitment is quietly scrutinised. Opportunities narrow. The same qualities previously associated with leadership can suddenly be interpreted as divided attention.
There remains an underlying cultural discomfort with the idea that someone can be both deeply committed to their family and highly effective in leadership.
We rarely ask fathers to prove they are still serious about their careers after becoming parents. Mothers, however, are often expected to continually demonstrate that they still “have what it takes”.
This becomes even more complicated when women return part-time into executive roles that were never genuinely designed to operate flexibly. Many leaders find themselves carrying the invisible burden of workload overflow. Strategic responsibilities, stakeholder management and team leadership do not conveniently shrink alongside contracted hours. The work spills into evenings, weekends and unpaid labour.
The part-time problem
Despite decades of progress on gender equality, motherhood continues to create a structural barrier to leadership representation.
According to the Australian Government’s 10-year-plan to unleash the full capacity and contribution of women to the Australian economy, women account for 70 per cent of Australia’s part-time workforce, largely because they continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic responsibilities.
Yet part-time roles have historically offered fewer opportunities for career progression, strategic projects and leadership development. As a result, many women find themselves on a slower pathway to senior leadership long before questions of capability or ambition arise.
The challenge is compounded by the career instability many mothers experience after having children. Research from the Australian National University has found that mothers are more likely to experience workforce exits, reduced hours and other negative employment transitions following the birth of a child, limiting the continuity and tenure often required for advancement into senior roles.
Leadership pipelines are built on cumulative experience and visibility. When mothers face repeated disruptions while fathers largely do not, it is little surprise that women remain underrepresented in executive leadership and boardrooms.
Outdated leadership models
There is another uncomfortable truth organisations need to confront.
Sometimes, when a senior leader takes extended parental leave, teams continue operating effectively without direct day-to-day oversight. When the leader returns, questions can quietly emerge about whether the role is still required in its previous form.
Too often, this creates pressure for returning leaders to prove their worth all over again. But this is the wrong conclusion.
A team functioning well during parental leave should not be interpreted as evidence that leadership is unnecessary. In many cases, it reflects successful delegation, stronger systems and greater team maturity.
Rather than framing this as an individual performance issue for returning parents, organisations should use it as an opportunity to reassess how leadership itself is designed. What work genuinely requires executive oversight? Where are managers adding strategic value? Which responsibilities exist simply because “that’s how it has always been done”?
Parental leave can expose inefficiencies and outdated management structures that organisations would otherwise ignore.
What workplaces must change now
If organisations genuinely want to retain senior female talent, they must stop treating flexibility as an accommodation and start redesigning leadership accordingly.
That means creating executive roles with realistic workload boundaries. It means measuring outcomes rather than visibility. It means normalising flexible leadership for everyone, not just mothers. And it means addressing the persistent cultural bias that still equates motherhood with reduced ambition.
Leaders themselves also need clearer boundaries. Increasingly, executives are expected to absorb the emotional weight of broader societal pressures, from cost-of-living stress to burnout and financial insecurity.
Good leadership absolutely involves creating psychologically safe workplaces and supporting people through difficult periods. But organisations cannot expect leaders, particularly returning mothers already navigating enormous personal change, to solve every social challenge placed at the workplace door.
Karlie Cremin is the CEO of DLPA and Crestcom Australia, organisations dedicated to helping businesses solve complex people challenges with practical, real-world solutions.
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